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Thursday, November 24, 2011

Two Minute Speech!

It was tueday afternoon when my teacher told me that I had to prepare a two minute speech in Chinese for thursday. The first thought that came to my head was "WHAT?! A TWO MINUTE SPEECH?!...IN CHINESE?!" I didn't really know what to say in the speech, though we were told to talk about our life in China so far and how we are liking it. The goal of this get-together was that all of the exchange students were going to go to a primary school to teach the little kids English. They were all going to have a speech in English and we were supposed to judge them and vote for who was the best kid, and then the kids had to do the same for us, help us with our Chinese. When my teachers told me this, I had expected it to be very professional. I thought that it was going to be like an assembly where everyone would sit and there would be a stage. I also figured that there would be a spokesman or woman but my assumption was totally off.

After school on tuesday, I prepared my speech. I practiced it quite a lot and wrote all of it in Chinese. I gave a little introduction about myself first and then went on to talking about life in China, my family, my school, food and a couple of other things. Hawk and I met up in front of my school and we took bus #44 to get to the meeting point. When we met up with everybody we walked to the primary school. The school was very small but apparently they were well known for their sports. But then again, China seems to be "well known" for a bunch of things, for example "This place is famous for their dumplings" "This place is famous for their tea"...there will always be some sort of siginifance and importance to any place you visit in China no matter where you go...they seem to always be "famous for something" as they always say.

Anyways...when we got there we had some time to spare so we all played a little basketball in the gym. It felt really good to play with a bunch of other foreign kids! Then the teachers took us to a room where they had tables set up for all of us. We sat in the order of kid, foreigner, kid, foreigner. Each kid was assigned a foreigner and we would help the kid that we were assigned with their speech that they had written. They were only eight years old but their English was well said and written! The kids wrote about their "Idol" and some of their Idols were classmates, others were Mozart, and others were family members. It's kind of amazing how Chinese kids know about Mozart and Picasso at the age of eight, most eight year olds in the US only know Disney shows and stars such as Hannah Montana.

After we helped them for 20 minutes, they all performed and some sang while others read off of their papers! Some of them actually tried to memorize, which was impressive! After they did their speech we had to vote for who was the best because there was a prize for 1st 2nd and 3rd place. But us being foreigners, we all voted for our own kids who were assigned to us, and plus at the age of 8 everybody wins! They were all impressive anyways. Once they were all given a certificate, It was the exchange student's turn to give our speech's! We went in alphabetical order so I was the fifth person to go. Everyone was very good and I believe I did really well! It wasn't half as hard as I expected and I feel as if I was able to get the kids attention with my speech. I was given a little prize at the end! (Three exchange students got prizes and I was one of them). The prize happened to be a pencil stand...I guess its a motivation to study harder? Haha. We were all handed a certificate aswell "Certificate of Appreciation".

Certificate!

Pencil Case Prize!!

Here is what I wrote:
大家好！我叫爱真，我今年十六岁。我是美国人。我在南京已经三个月了。我感觉中国的生活和美国的生活非常不一样，但是我都喜欢。 我很喜欢我的中国家人。我的家庭有三口人，他们是妈妈，爸爸，和妹妹， 可是我的妹妹也十六岁。在这个家庭我感觉很舒服和安全。如果我有问题，我可以问他们，他们会尽快帮助我。我是中华中学的学生。我有好多好朋友。在中华中学我有两个汉语老师。他们是非常好的老师，他们也是我的好朋友！我每天自己做公共汽车去学校，回家的时候也是自己做的。我喜欢吃中餐所以我每天吃得没有问题！我最喜欢吃米线！我觉得我的中文越来越好！我真的很喜欢在中国的生活！

2 comments:

WOAH WOMAN! i love doing speeches in engrish but i could never do them in another language o.0 except maybe spanish and hawaiian.... thats legit! and those little kids know about people that i dont know about! ik they are artists and musicians.. and thats about it.. "umm my idol is Lil Wayne.. cause hes THE BIGGEST SWAGSTAHH I EVA KNOWN" aha no no no jk jk dude you wont believe how bad my english is. like i talk with a slur and some times i listen to the way i talk and i get al mad at myself that i cant speal correctly -_- its insane.. and idk how to fix it.. i have to go to langual rehab or some doodoo like that. CONGRADS ON YOU WINNING A PRIZE! and ur certificate :) :'( momy is proud of you darlin! TEEHEE were u nervous giving the speech? or did your beastly acting skills kick in? :p

Congrats on being in the top 3!! The Chinese speech looks so hard, all those chinese characters! I think it is funny about everything having some "famous" aspect to it. Now that I recall I do remember someone always pointing stuff like that out when we were in China.